


Oblivious

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-18 04:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11866401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: It wasn'tmatchmaking.He wouldn't be caught deadmatchmaking.It was just that having those two idiots giving each other cow-eyed looks across the bullpen was bad for morale. Particularly forhismorale.(In which Jack wishes Peggy and Daniel would catch a clue about their mutual pining, while obliviously pining for all he's worth.)





	Oblivious

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glorious_spoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/gifts).



> This is a fill for the "matchmaker" square on my trope bingo card, though obviously I couldn't admit that until after reveals ...

Jack had been watching Sousa not-so-subtly making eyes at Carter from very nearly the first day she clicked into the office on those heels. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad. 

For one thing, she was clearly out of Sousa's league. Margaret Carter was a good kid, smart, pretty as hell -- if it weren't for the chip on her shoulder and her general tendency to butt in where she wasn't needed rather than sticking to terrorizing the other girls in the typing pool, she'd have been a real catch, at least for somebody who wasn't going to fold at the first lash of her acid tongue.

And, okay, it was hard not to like Sousa. Jack did, though he also thought Sousa was something of a dry stick, probably not the type who livened up a party even _before_ losing his leg. But he was all right. Took a lot of night shifts so the real agents didn't have to, that kind of thing. And maybe that was one reason why watching him moon after Carter irritated Jack. It wasn't like it was going to go anywhere; it was just a slowly unfolding train wreck that should have been funny, but somehow wasn't.

 _War hero,_ a small, sarcastic voice said in the back of his head. _That's what a real war hero looks like, not a fake like you. That's what you get: not medals, not a nice cushy agency position on a fast track to a promotion, but a crutch and a desk job, if you're lucky, and girls laughing in your face._

Though Carter probably wouldn't laugh. She was ... she was sharp, Jack realized after a couple months of working with her, in more ways than one, but she was also a woman, and they liked the wounded hero thing. Maybe it wasn't so far-fetched, after all, that Carter might end up going for Sousa's wounded-puppy routine. 

Jack tried to suppress a weird twinge at that thought. Sure, she wouldn't give _him_ the time of day, not that he was interested in her type anyhow, but it was all right, it wasn't like any guy in the office had gotten any farther. But the idea that she might pass him by and go for Sousa instead ...

\-- Aw, hell, what kind of woman was going to look twice at a guy with only one leg when she had a whole bullpen full of other guys to choose from? Especially when she'd been _Captain America_ 's girl, if the rumors were right. 

_Give it up, ya dumb sap,_ Jack thought, watching out of the corner of his eye as Sousa, en route to his desk, nearly ran into Krzeminski while trying very hard not to stare as Carter entered the room, utterly oblivious, nose buried in the uppermost of a stack of files that she was probably sorting with her usual (lack of) efficiency. _Just get over it, or at least man up and ask her out so she can shoot you down proper-like._

"Watch where you're goin', Sousa," Krzeminski said impatiently. "You get your eyes shot off in the war, too?" He laughed like he thought he'd just made the world's funniest joke. If they'd been in a group, Jack would probably have either laughed along, or shot him down with a barbed rejoinder if everybody else seemed to find his attempts at humor as painful as Jack did. Since no one else was paying attention, though, Jack settled for rolling his eyes over his surveillance photos.

"That doesn't even make any sense, Harpo," Sousa said, and Jack grinned with his face half-hidden by the photo he was flipping over. Sousa had a real mouth on him, when he wasn't busy being the office doormat. Jack liked him best when he showed that sharper edge.

"Shows what you know, I don't play an instrument," Krzeminski retorted in what he probably thought was a snappy comeback, leaving Sousa staring after him with a look that was half amused and half disbelieving. 

And then he turned around and nearly collided with Carter this time, who had come tripping up with her armful of files while Daniel was distracted. There was a moment of mutual attempting-to-dodge and Daniel helped catch the files as they threatened to cascade out of her arms. 

"Oh, thank you, Agent Sousa."

"It's, uh, Daniel. If you want."

Jack closed his eyes briefly in despair and turned over the next photo. He couldn't listen to this. Really, he couldn't.

"Well, you should call me Peggy, then."

 _And now ...?_ Jack prompted, taking another sideways peek to see that the moment was becoming awkward as Sousa continued to stand, tongue-tied, in her path. _Ask her if she wants to get a cup of coffee, you dink. She just gave you a wide-open invitation. The worst she can do is say no._

Hell, she was even smiling at him. Her smiles in Jack's direction tended to look more like grimaces.

"If I might trouble you -- my desk is back there --" Carter prompted after a moment.

"Oh! Sorry!" Sousa hastily stepped to the side, Carter tripped past, and Jack resisted the urge to bang his head on top of _his_ desk.

It was painful. Really, it was.

For an instant, Jack just wanted to get up, march across the bullpen, grab Sousa by a fistful of that frikkin' sweatervest and shove him in Carter's direction. Hold him down, if necessary, until he actually _said_ something. "Buy you a cup of coffee?" Jack mouthed to himself as he mechanically scanned the surveillance photos in front of him, moving them to the side as he searched each one for any sign of the white car they were trying to locate. 

It was asking a girl out, not brain surgery. People did it every day.

 

***

 

And then Belarus happened.

Fennhoff happened.

Dooley happened.

And everything changed. _Everything._

Jack was allocating assignments in the sea of paperwork on top of the desk that was now his ( _how's it feel to be the fake hero, again?_ ) and realized he'd tossed Peggy a fieldwork assignment without even thinking about it. He knew she could handle it. Sharp, tough, beautiful, and yet tightly controlled. He'd never met anyone quite like her.

After a moment's thought, he scribbled Daniel's name on the duty roster next to hers.

It wasn't _matchmaking._ He wouldn't be caught dead _matchmaking._ It was just that having those two idiots giving each other cow-eyed looks across the bullpen was bad for morale. Particularly for _his_ morale.

And maybe it was the least he could do, for the two people who --

\-- _saved your miserable life, both of them; and for that, you stole the credit for everything they did_ \--

He'd _had_ to, he told himself. People weren't going to accept a woman or a one-legged guy as the big hero who saved New York. They sure weren't going to put either one of them in charge.

People needed a symbol. Dooley'd been grooming Jack as his successor; everyone at the office knew it. It just wouldn't have gone anywhere, if he'd told the truth. The outcome would've been the same, except it would have made the whole office look bad.

He tried not to think about what it had felt like, walking in to work on his first full day as the new Chief of the New York SSR. It should have been his big moment of triumph. Instead, he'd felt as hollow and sick as the day they'd put the Navy Cross in his hand. There had been congratulations and slaps on the back, but what he mainly remembered was Peggy looking at him with an expression of resigned disappointment, and Daniel with anger.

Jack set the duty roster aside. He glanced out the glassed-in front of Dooley's office -- _his_ office, had to remind himself of that -- and then bent over to get a flask of bourbon out of the bottom drawer, the exact drawer where Dooley used to keep it.

Sure, it was only eleven in the morning, but a sip wasn't going to hurt, and it helped him stop thinking about things he couldn't change. Not now, anyway.

 

***

 

For a couple of spies, Peggy and Daniel had to be the least observant people he'd ever met. It didn't matter how many stakeouts he put them on together. Things were still pretty much the same in the bullpen: politely friendly conversations around the office coffeepot, and looking at each other a lot when they thought the other one wasn't looking.

For God's sake. 

_Just reach out a hand and grab a little happiness,_ Jack thought at them angrily after watching the two of them bid each other a polite but awkward good night before Peggy left and Daniel bent his head over some paperwork. He absently opened the bottom desk drawer and discovered that the bourbon bottle was mostly empty. Have to stock up. Especially if he had to keep watching reel after reel of a film titled _Carter and Sousa Couldn't Catch a Clue With Both Hands._

The world was a cold and unhappy place, and most people didn't even get a chance at what they were clearly not willing to take a chance on. It drove him crazy.

He only found out what was going on with Peggy and Daniel's continued, mutual inability to get on the same page when he ended up taking Daniel out for a drink in celebration of the Los Angeles promotion. It wasn't planned. It was just, they were both working late, and they got to talking about the details of the move and Daniel setting up his new office, and it seemed easier to move the conversation to the SSR's favorite watering hole, where they had a drink or five while hashing out details.

Having Daniel ask his advice was a weird, heady experience. A few months ago, he would've soaked it up as his due. Now that he'd come to see Daniel as his equal in fieldwork (embarrassing to admit, and not something he'd ever say to his face, but true), it felt a bit strange to end up in a situation where Daniel was deferring to Jack's expertise.

"You'll do fine," Jack said. "It's mostly paperwork anyway."

"Yeah, I guessed from the state of your desk."

He'd rarely seen Daniel like this, relaxed and half drunk and a little sloppy. Up to this point, Jack had thought the thing he liked most about Daniel was his sharp edge, those brief flashes of sarcastic humor. But seeing Daniel like this -- soft, warm, even friendly toward him -- made him think maybe _this_ was the Daniel he liked best. He wasn't sure if he'd ever seen Daniel act like this with him, and now maybe he thought this was the Daniel that Peggy always saw. Or used to, anyway.

"Why in the hell don't you ask Carter out for drinks, you nitwit?" he asked as they left the bar, stepping out into the bracing night air, both of them swaying a little and on the verge of stumbling into each other. "You know she'd probably say yes."

There was a brief silence followed by a small cough. "Shows what you know," Daniel said. "I did. She turned me down."

Jack gave him a startled look. Daniel had his head down, one hand jammed into the pocket of his coat, the other gripping the crutch. Wind skittered scraps of newspaper down the street. Summer wasn't quite over, but there was a crispness at night now, heralding the onset of another gray, miserable New York winter. Which Daniel was going to miss in L.A., the lucky chump ...

"What do you mean, she turned you down?"

"You want me to draw you a picture?" Daniel said. "I asked. She said no."

"Recently?"

"No. Right after the Stark case. Why all this interest in my personal life all of a sudden?"

Jack couldn't answer, at least not immediately. His entire view of what he thought was going on with Peggy and Daniel had just been tipped on end, and what came with it was a sudden flare of anger that startled him. "Who the hell does she think she is?"

Daniel gave a surprised, rather soft laugh, and reached out a hand, attempting to grab his arm for some reason. As drunk as they both were, Daniel ended up stumbling against him instead and bouncing off. "She's Peggy. Knows her own mind."

"So she thinks she's too good for you or what?" He'd thought he knew Peggy, the real Peggy, for a few short days, before finding out she had played them for weeks. He didn't know what she was capable of. His chest twisted at the thought that maybe she really _did_ look down on Daniel for his war injury. _Though ... ain't like I wasn't a shit about it too ..._

"Jack." Daniel gripped his arm on the second try and gave it a shake. "It's not -- Look, I made a mistake asking her, that's all. Forget about it. I already have."

 _No you haven't,_ Jack thought, staring at him. He'd seen some of the looks Peggy gave Daniel across the bullpen, not to speak of Daniel's looks back. What game was she playing? How could she not _see_ \--

They were standing awfully close, he and Daniel. Daniel's strong fingers were still clamped over Jack's forearm. He wasn't used to being this close to people. He wasn't used to being _touched_ like this. Oh, casual touches were one thing -- slaps on the back, a friendly handclasp on the shoulder.

But this was intimate, in a way he just _wasn't_ with people. It made him think, in a way, of talking to Peggy on the plane coming back from Belarus, sitting with each other in the window, the quiet intimacy of it.

Except Daniel was just looking into his face, not saying anything, as if he was searching for answers to some unspoken question.

The unholy temptation swept over Jack to lean forward and kiss him.

And then he was pushing Daniel's hand off his arm, stepping back, regaining some space. What the _hell._ He didn't -- he wasn't -- Okay, a few drunken occasions at college came to mind, maybe once or twice overseas. But that was ... that was being a kid, that was being drunk and lonely and scared and a long way from home.

"So that's why you're taking the L.A. job?" he said. It came out ugly, and the worst part was, he didn't even know who he was angry at. Peggy. Daniel. Himself. "Because you're running?"

"For God's sake, Jack," Daniel said, weary and, now, angry. "I don't know why I told you that. I knew you'd find a way to make me regret it. If you say anything to Peggy --"

"I'm not saying anything to Peggy; why would I? It's not like I give a damn about your personal business, like you said."

"So why'd you ask then?"

Jack threw his hands in the air and turned away. His subway stop was the other direction, but that seemed to be the way Daniel was going, too, and right now he just needed to clear his head. "I was making friendly conversation! Don't bite a guy's head off! Good _night!"_

Daniel made a wordless, disgruntled noise at his back, and when Jack looked back, Daniel was headed the other way, his bare head lowered against the wind, wobbling a little on the crutch.

There was a part of him that wanted to make sure Daniel got home all right.

He ruthlessly squashed it, and walked five blocks out of his way to a different subway stop to catch the train uptown.

By the time he got to his townhouse, he was through the fun part of being drunk and into the headachy, angry, regretful part. He stripped off his tie and jacket, kicked off his shoes, and flopped on top of the rumpled bedcovers, too tired to bother getting the rest of the way undressed. Rolling to face the wall, he thought of Daniel in L.A. and Peggy still here but with the new/old distance that had grown between them ( _because of me, because of what I did_ ), and he was so lonely he wanted to cry.

 

***

 

Months later, there were a lot of reasons why he sent Peggy to L.A., and it wasn't until he was on the plane, flying out there and trying not to want to see the two of them again as much as he did, that it occurred to him not the least of those reasons had been a hope that they'd work out whatever had gone wrong between them. 

But they hadn't; Daniel was engaged to someone else. And Jack was genuinely happy for him. For one thing, Daniel _should_ be happy, damn it, he deserved it, and anyway, Daniel being engaged made it easier to go on being ... friends, if they were even friends. Semi-amiable colleagues, anyway. They got along better on opposite coasts than they'd ever gotten along when they worked in the same office. And that was all right.

But there was still Peggy to contend with. Peggy, with all that fire in her eyes; Peggy, with her strong compact body and her will of steel. He'd thought of her as "Daniel's girl" for so long that he'd almost successfully crushed down his awareness of her as a woman, and now all of _that_ came rushing back, because if Daniel wanted someone else, then Jack was of half a mind to --

... but. But. Peggy, who had turned out to be able to lie as glibly as Fennhoff; Peggy, who carried too many of Jack's secrets for him to ever be able to trust her. She could ruin him with a single word. Once, for all too short a time, he'd trusted her more than he had ever trusted another human being. He'd thought --

It didn't matter what he'd thought.

Anyway, there were too many petty betrayals between them for anything to ever work out, on either side. If he asked her out, she'd probably just laugh in his face. Or hit him.

That didn't stop him from thinking, late at night, about how her lipstick might taste.

 

***

 

Whitney Frost happened.

Vernon happened.

Peggy pointed a gun between his eyes. That happened.

And she looked him in the eyes and called him a good man, and he didn't know how to deal with that, any more than he knew how to deal with the way he and Daniel had played Vernon so easily, working together as a team. Vernon, who Jack had always thought of as the best chessmaster he knew. But they'd _played_ him. They'd done that. Together.

Daniel had willingly put his life in Jack's hands, after everything. After he'd damn near straight-up betrayed them.

Peggy thought he was a good man, even knowing all she knew about him. And there was a part of him that wondered if she was lying, but ... if you could know people at all, he thought he was starting to know her, and she _could_ lie (he knew full well how adeptly she could lie) but she wasn't good at those kinds of lies. Unlike people of Vernon's ilk, Peggy lied with her words but not her heart. 

Daniel was that way, too.

So she wasn't going back to New York with him, huh? He hoped that meant what he thought it meant. After all of this, they deserved to be happy. 

(And he wasn't, he definitely _wasn't_ thinking about flying back alone, about how much emptier the New York office felt without either one of them there. The important thing was, she wanted to stay with Daniel and that made her happy, made both of them happy. And somehow, their happiness mattered to him more than his own.)

 

***

 

A bullet happened.

 

***

 

Jack dragged himself back to the world a little bit at a time, heavy and aching, his mouth desert-dry and his chest crushed in the grip of a giant fist. The first sight that met his bleary gaze, as he twisted his head to the side, was Peggy sitting in Daniel's lap on the chair beside the bed.

Which made him choke and then start coughing. Peggy yelped and fell off. Jack wished he had enough breath to laugh at it properly, instead of being distracted by the way his chest was trying to rip itself apart.

Hands -- two pairs of hands: strong and gentle, quick and soft -- helped him sit up and held a glass of water to his lips. 

"If you really wanted to stay in L.A. so bad, Jack, all you had to do was say something." Daniel's voice was light, almost laughing.

"I hate L.A.," he managed to grumble when Peggy took the water glass away after half drowning him and dribbling some of it down his front; the woman was not a natural nurse. "I hate it a lot more after getting shot in it, trust me."

Peggy set the glass on the bedside table, but stayed perched on the side of the bed. Daniel was sitting on the other side, one of his hands pressed to Jack's back, half holding him up. Jack gave him a look, and Daniel lowered him back to the pillows. Peggy had her hand loosely looped around his wrist, and he decided not to do anything about that for the time being.

He must have scared the absolute hell out of them. He tried not to think about that -- tried not to think about how their worry and relief was written plainly on their faces. Instead they talked about the case, about the leads, about the missing file and the Arena Club pin ... for a few minutes, at least, until his eyelids started to droop.

"So how much danger is there of someone shooting me in my bed?" he croaked as he steadily lost the fight against sleep.

"Not much, with us here," Peggy said.

He fell asleep before he could ask if they were planning to hang around his hospital bed 24/7 as a flattering but weird honor guard, and if so, _why._ The L.A. SSR wasn't _that_ short-staffed.

He could never be sure afterwards if he had only dreamed the light, dry brush of Peggy's lips across his forehead as he fell asleep. He knew it was her by the waft of her perfume.

If he hadn't dreamed it. Which perhaps he had.

 

***

 

As it turned out, Peggy and Daniel weren't around 24/7 (thank God) but there was always a guard on his room. After two weeks of slow, grueling recovery, the hospital deemed him well enough to kick him out the door, and Peggy insisted that he should move into Stark's mansion.

"Oh, come on. There's no need," Jack snapped, sitting on the edge of his bed and trying to look like it hadn't exhausted him just getting his shoes on.

"Stop being a martyr," Peggy shot back. "The mansion makes the most sense. There's ample room, there's nearly always someone home, and the security is much better than a hotel. Or didn't your previous experience teach you anything?"

"Low blow," Jack muttered.

"Alternatively, you could move in with Daniel, should you so desire. I believe he has a spare bedroom. Of course the two of you will have to share a kitchen and a bathroom. I'm sure that won't be awkward at all. As opposed to having your own attached bathroom and a private cook at Howard's."

"You know, since you put it that way ..."

 

***

 

Staying at the mansion wasn't as excruciatingly awkward as he'd been afraid it would be. He started getting used to random encounters with the Jarvises, with Stark, with random friends of Peggy's, and of course with Peggy and Daniel at all hours.

In some ways it put him in mind of being in the service, or even more accurately, being at college. The quiet, lonesome townhouse in New York had its charms, but so did evenings in Stark's living room, sipping a drink while the radio played quietly, Jarvis puttered around in the kitchen, and Peggy and Daniel taught Ana Jarvis the finer points of gambling over cards.

He was ... happy. Ish. There was still the matter of the at-large gunman, the ever-spreading investigation into the Arena Club, and the difficulty of trying to manage the New York SSR from L.A., not to mention the ticklish issue of next year's funding. And there was the way his healing body dragged at him, reminding him of his own weakness at every step.

But ... he liked being here. He liked these people.

He liked watching Peggy and Daniel, thinking they were being discreet while giving themselves away with every light brush of a hand, every weighted look, every sparkling-eyed smile. He knew what they looked like when they were unhappy, which made this all the sweeter by comparison. And if there was a bittersweet undercurrent to the way he felt when he watched them (which might have been jealousy, though of which of them, he didn't know; or maybe just a soft wistful longing) it was made up for by the brightness of Peggy's laughter when Daniel caught her hand and whispered a private joke into her ear, meant for the two of them alone.

 

***

 

"Just hold on, Daniel -- _breathe,_ damn it --"

Jack's hands were slick with blood. So were Peggy's; she was red up to the elbows. Where was their backup? This wasn't supposed to go down like this. Hell, if anything, _Jack_ was the weak link here, still barely able to walk a few blocks without stopping for breath.

But it wasn't his fault, and it wasn't Daniel's fault, either. You couldn't outrun a bullet even with two good legs and a pair of good lungs.

He raised his gaze across Daniel's terribly still body (not dead, please not dead) just as Peggy looked up too. For a moment their eyes met and it was like looking into a mirror: the same terror, the same desperate, frightened love. Her face was white, her cheek smeared with Daniel's blood.

And then the SSR descended on them. Backup. _Finally._ Peggy tried to hold onto Daniel's hand, her fingers sliding through his as he was taken away, and his head turned back, lips moving, eyes locked onto her -- onto both of them -- until the ambulance door closed behind him.

As they got into an SSR car to follow, Jack realized that Peggy was trembling. She'd had to go through this twice in two months, he thought, first having to find Jack in a pool of blood on the hotel room floor, and now --

But of course the two situations weren't comparable. Almost losing a boss and maybe-friend wasn't anything compared to having to use her bare hands to hold in the lifeblood of her boyfriend and probably-soon-fiancé.

Still, it couldn't be easy.

He didn't suggest going home to change (what the hell, when did he start calling Stark's mansion "home", anyway?) even with Daniel's blood drying stiff on his shirtfront. Instead they both scrubbed their hands in a public hospital restroom. The Jarvises turned up a bit later, bringing a change of clothes (for both of them, Jack was surprised to note) and a thermos of strong tea. The four of them sat together for awhile and played cards, periodically fielding check-ins with the SSR team who had apprehended the informant who'd shot Daniel and were even now interrogating him, before Peggy talked Jarvis into taking Ana home. Ana, like Jack, still tired easily after being shot, even months later.

"You should go with them," Peggy told Jack.

"Like hell I will."

She didn't argue, just sighed and leaned back against the wall.

"Heck of a year, isn't it?" Jack said, a little weakly.

Peggy's lips curved in a slight smile. Even in the middle of all of this commotion, her makeup was impeccable. She must have touched that up in the restroom, too. Come to think of it, it'd been perfect every time he'd seen her when _he_ was in the hospital too.

Well, he understood about that kind of armor; it was why his ties were always straight, his suits perfectly pressed.

He glanced down at his rumpled shirt. Okay, _most_ of the time.

"Agents Carter and Thompson?" a male voice asked, and they both looked up.

Jack didn't retain a lot of what the doctor said, except the gist of it: Daniel was out of surgery, heart and lung function was good, and he was expected to make a full recovery.

Peggy turned to Jack as the doctor turned away, her eyes shining with a world of delighted joy in them. "He's going to be okay," she said, and she kissed him.

It was incredibly brief, a dry, warm brush of her lips that went straight to Jack's core. From the look of utter startlement on her face as she pulled away, he didn't think she'd meant to.

They stared at each other and Peggy took a breath, started to say something, and then stopped. Her lipstick was slightly smudged now, he noticed, a red smear at the corner of her mouth.

The thing was, he knew he should be indignant on Daniel's behalf, no less so than when Peggy had turned him down all those months ago. Her boyfriend was in a hospital bed and here she was canoodling with any jerk who came along --

Except ... that's not what it felt like. That wasn't _her._ And instead of laughing it off, instead of pretending something hadn't happened that clearly just had, Jack said something he would never have said to anyone who wasn't Peggy.

"You know, I almost kissed Sousa too, last year."

Nothing had scared him that much since he'd opened his mouth on a plane inbound from Belarus and told her the story he'd never told anyone else. Except in a way, this was worse: it was a story he hadn't even told to himself yet.

And here he was telling it to Daniel's girlfriend, of all people.

Except that Peggy was smiling now, hesitant, with warmth in her soft brown eyes. "I know," she said quietly. "He told me."

"He -- what?"

"Jack ..." She reached out a hand and slipped it into his. Jack was too confused to pull away, even when her fingers curled around his. "We've talked about you."

"I'll just bet," was what he said, in an almost-normal tone of dry sarcasm, but underneath, his heart was starting to beat fast.

"Do you want to come see Daniel with me?" she asked, quietly.

They held hands all the way down the hallway.

 

***

 

When Daniel woke up, Peggy and Jack were sitting at his bedside, playing cards. It was a weird deja-vu echo of Jack's own memories of waking up after he'd been shot.

Okay, so there was no lap-cuddling ... and wouldn't be, not the two of them, not without Sousa's approval.

But when Daniel's eyes opened and he saw them, his face went soft and loving at _both_ of them, and Jack's brain did that same little rearranging trick that it had done when Daniel had told him Peggy turned him down -- except in a very different way.

"Hi," Peggy whispered, bending down to kiss Daniel.

"Hi." Daniel's voice was a dry rasp. He reached out a hand, and Jack, without really thinking about it, took it and laced their fingers together. "Are you two okay?"

Peggy's breath huffed out on a soft laugh, and she traded an indulgent look with Jack. "Yes. We're fine."

"Not surprising, since we're the only people in this room who aren't currently in a hospital bed," Jack couldn't resist adding, and there was something vaguely comforting about Daniel giving him a familiar exasperated look, even if Daniel's fingers were still tangled in his. "Getting shot was so fun you just had to try it, huh?" 

Daniel's weakly exasperated look said it all. 

"The important thing is, the doctor said you're going to be all right," Peggy said, leaning down to kiss him lightly.

"You want water?" Jack asked. "I remember how dry my mouth was, when I was -- where you are."

"Not my first time on this merry-go-round," Daniel croaked, and Jack's stomach lurched downward, because ... of course it wasn't. But Daniel added, "Yeah, that'd be good."

So they watered him, and Jack went to get a nurse to check his bandages and whatever, remembering how it never seemed like the nurses came around when you needed them. (He hadn't run into Daniel's nurse ex yet, not during his time in the hospital or this time, which seemed like a mercy. Possibly she'd avoided his floor, and now, Daniel's floor. And one of these days he was going to get that full story.)

But for now, he stood back and watched Daniel drifting into the edge of sleep. The nurse had left, and Peggy was sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing back Daniel's hair. Jack's heart twisted with the familiar sweet/wistful quiver that seeing them like that always produced in him.

Except this time, Peggy looked up, and her hand paused in rubbing Daniel's knuckles with her thumb. Daniel turned his head, too, and suddenly two pairs of brown eyes were fixed on Jack with a very similar, soft look.

It was true, he thought, a bit dizzily; couples _do_ start to resemble each other, after a while ...

"So," he said, "I should probably be going, leave you two alone ..."

"You're welcome to say," Peggy said, just as Daniel rasped out, "Jack, stop being an idiot."

"Oh, what, I'm an idiot now?" But everything about the way they were looking at him said _come,_ and so he came, and sat on the other side of the bed and awkwardly tried holding Daniel's hand again. Daniel twisted his hand around to clasp his fingers firmly around Jack's, and Peggy put her hand over both of theirs.

"I think you ought to know," Jack said, trying for bravado and coming up short. "I kissed your girlfriend earlier."

"Oh, good," Daniel said in a faint, relieved voice. "Took long enough."

"What?" The sheer effrontery of this accusation cut him to the quick. "Listen, I had to watch the two of you staring sadly in each other's direction for _two years._ Glass houses, pots and kettles, et cetera."

"We did _what?"_ Peggy said.

"Why do you _think_ I sent you to L.A.?"

"Oh, why doesn't it surprise me at all that you're going to take credit for that?"

Her words were annoyed, but her tone wasn't, and as if to punctuate it, she leaned over Daniel in the bed and kissed Jack again, this time with the faintest lick of tongue as she pulled away.

Jack stared at her, and then glanced anxiously down at Daniel, who grinned at him and squeezed his hand. And Daniel's eyes still said: _Come._

Very carefully, Jack bent down and kissed Daniel on the corner of his cracked, dry lips.

Daniel closed his eyes and brought up a hand to cup Jack's face, before his hand slipped wearily away.

"Why are you not asleep yet?" Peggy asked Daniel, bending down to deliver a kiss of her own on the other corner of his mouth.

"Just getting there," Daniel promised drowsily.

They sat and held his hands until he fell asleep. And then Jack came around to Peggy's side of the bed, and they sat with their arms around each other, heads resting together, and watched Daniel sleep. And right now, it was all he wanted out of life.

The whole thing was strange and wonderful and not like anything he'd had with anyone else, or anything he'd ever heard of, for that matter. He had no idea where this was going to go or how any of it was going to work -- but somehow they'd made it through the last two years without killing each other or getting killed by anyone else, or even actually hating each other, not for lack of trying.

So maybe they could do this too.

He'd put in a lot more effort for things that mattered a lot less. And for this, he was willing to try.

**Author's Note:**

> Daniel's insult to Krzeminski - that's Harpo as in Harpo Marx. Basically Daniel's calling him a clown. I originally had Alley Oop (cartoon caveman) instead, but I couldn't come up with a plausible Krzeminski-esque misunderstanding for that one.


End file.
